Red Wedding, Song of Ice and Fire, and Blood-Colored Glasses Lie

just as much as rose-colored glasses.

**Language and Spoiler Alerts!**

Why I couldn't get into A Game of Thrones. (**SERIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD!**)

..."So - when you eliminate just about every character that I care about, then continue to kill anyone with any sense of moral compass with such vengeance so as to punish them for even thinking that principles mattered, allow the wretched and evil to win over and over again and gain more power, and basically remove any and all hope of anything good ever happening (because how can I enjoy a show when every character I liked is now dead,) why is it exactly that I should continue watching?" wrote Tony...

Truly hilarious Twitter commentary as well (language and general despair alert.  Oh, and spoilers).  And this is a gem.  Excerpts:

A plane on route to the San Francisco International Airport tonight had to make an emergency landing when passengers watching pirated versions of the HBO series Game of Thrones began hyperventilating, screaming hysterically, and violently damaging their tray tables. The situation turned more volatile when an airline stewardess unintentionally spoiled the ending of the episode for the captain, after which he stormed out of the cockpit shouting obscenities, forcing his co-pilot to land the plane on his own...

“This chick next to me just started freaking out” says Martin Lodge, 39. “She was sobbing and kept saying ‘why, why, why’. At first, I thought maybe her boyfriend had just broken up with her by email or something, but then I heard this guy at the back of the plane yell ‘no way! no f**king way!’ and I knew something was going on. But what really tripped me out was the lady behind me. She started laughing!”

That lady was Angelica George, 32, who says she would have given anything to have had a video camera. “This was one of the most hysterical things I’ve ever seen. I’m a huge Game of Thrones fan and I’ve read the books, so I know exactly what happened in tonight’s episode. I just couldn’t help but laugh at their reactions, especially when the captain ran into the cabin shouting “f**k you George RR Martin!”

After landing, the plane was unloaded quickly and the affected passengers and captain were rushed to a nearby emergency room where they were treated with oxygen, heat blankets, and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s Rocky Road Ice Cream.

There is no word yet on their condition...

Anyway, humor aside.  I posted about the whole "slaughter everyone with a conscience; bad guys full speed ahead" problem with the series.  A friend commented:

How like life...GRRM likes to make a mockery of the noble class, who proclaim chivalry and honor but snuff it out wherever they see it. He reminds me of a plebian Cormac McCarthy in a way.

And yet proclaiming that there are no more good guys is no way to generate new good guys. Resigning yourself to the prevalence of vice today is no way to become virtuous yourself. The response of St. Benedict to the collapse of the Roman civilization was heroic sanctity, and he and his helped save civilization. I refuse to accept the counsels of despair. The day we all accept them is the day we collectively commit civilizational suicide. Only in hope is there life, and realism.

The response:

Yet it's not about vice TODAY it's about vice in history--a critical look at the kings and lords of medieval Europe.

An utterly unrealistic one. What role--I mean a real, substantive role--has religion played in Game of Thrones? Where're the great saints, bending history around themselves--Thomas Becket, Catherine of Siena, Benedict of Nursia, Francis of Assisi, Dominic, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, Margaret of Scotland, Elizabeth of Hungary, and so on and on and on? Where are the people who won't be bought or bent, and why aren't their triumphs included, as well as their deaths? Because there really have been such people in every century. Bad men haven't always had their way, and sometimes good is so powerful that it shall never be forgotten. Criticize the sins of the Europeans all you want, but unless you at least nod to their saints, you are being as unrealistic as the person who wears rose-colored glasses.

The response:

It's a point, though I suspect secular figures who won't be bent are more common in life as well as art.

It would take a lot of time and effort to prove either way, but I'd bet that, given the prevalence of religion across times and cultures before the modern age, you'd be hard pressed to muster enough folk unmotivated by any religious impulse to make that a really provable point. That debate is irrelevant, though, because it reinforces the underlying problem with the Song of Ice and Fire: namely, he seems to not have room in his world for people who will not bend before temptation or evil, for grace and goodness that wins, rather than simply being eradicated by the ruthless. He's not writing a realistic saga. It's not even Machiavellian--it's barely even modern realpolitik. It's certainly ahistorical and antithetical to human nature. He may be demonstrating John Wright's point about the challenge some writers face when attempting to write realistic human beings. Excerpts:

...[W]hy are my favorite authors, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Gene Wolfe, Mike Flynn, G.K. Chesterton, all members of this monstrous Syriac cult known as Christianity? I do like my freethinker authors just fine, but Bob Heinlein, Ayn Rand, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke seem to have trouble with realism in characterization, both with their invented people, and with their invented societies.

Don’t get me wrong, I love their books, love and reread them many times, but the people who don’t believe in souls don’t seem to be able to portray their characters three-dimensionally and solidly, that is, as if their characters had souls.

Or as if the world were only this:

And this:

And never this: